James Murphy

Finally, with “Reflektor,” the first cut off the eponymous new album, we can begin to hear what this quasi-supergroup sounds like. Murphy’s touches — the throbbing bass, the squawk of scratchy needles — are unmistakable.

Combine this with the ubiquitous, conspicuous drug and alcohol consumption, plus the fact that people everywhere are dressed in flashy outfits they’d never wear anywhere else, and suddenly the real nature of Outside Lands becomes pretty apparent: this festival is just one big high-school/college party.

At first, hearing about the shows, parties, and ridiculousness of it all was entertaining – something I could live through vicariously. But after the first two days, and the seventy-seventh time I scrolled past yet another blog post on some awesome show where everyone was wasted on margaritas by noon, I was starting to get bummed. Or annoyed. Most likely a mixture of both.

Turns out that Sheen, with characteristic humility, had titled his tour “My Violent Torpedo of Truth: Defeat is Not an Option.” Then he got up, strapped himself to the end of the torpedo, and launched himself into oblivion. It was, according to every report, pure comedy suicide.

Both Wallace and Murphy worked within the formal constraints of the very genres they were trying to transcend: Murphy used the sleek superficiality of dance music to explore some profound emotional experiences, while Wallace used the grammar and trickery of metafiction to expose the pitfalls of the avant-garde and ironic.

Despite the LCD’s heft as a singles act and DFA’s traffic with remix culture, Murphy remains, generationally and even temperamentally, a believer in the album form – not as pop music’s “highest” form, but as one of several, each with their own potentials and constraints – and, in context, even the half-baked tracks here serve the honorable function of cleansing the palate for the more satisfying courses.